Mumblings & grumblings: Politics, crime, and other assorted notions occupying my thoughts as I muddle through late middle age.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Cavafy

There was a time in my life when I wanted to be a poet. I started small at a young age. In time I went from juvenile to angsty and from there to sort of competent. Martin Kravitz, a classmate at Jefferson Jr. High, was spot on when noted in our year book predictions that I'd be an infamous poet. That's never what I got a name for.

When I was around 18, I met a fella from Greece who persuaded me that I should read Cavafy by gifting me with a copy of his poems translated by Rae Dalven. I was always taken by the poem Waiting For The Barbarians, I ran across a copy of it today and found how apt it was.

Thought I'd share:

Waiting for the Barbarians

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are to arrive today.

Why such inaction in the Senate?
Why do the Senators sit and pass no laws?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
What laws can the Senators pass any more?
When the barbarians come they will make the laws.

Why did our emperor wake up so early,
and sits at the greatest gate of the city,
on the throne, solemn, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today.
And the emperor waits to receive
their chief. Indeed he has prepared
to give him a scroll. Therein he inscribed
many titles and names of honor.

Why have our two consuls and the praetors come out
today in their red, embroidered togas;
why do they wear amethyst-studded bracelets,
and rings with brilliant, glittering emeralds;
why are they carrying costly canes today,
wonderfully carved with silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today,
and such things dazzle the barbarians.

Why don't the worthy orators come as always
to make their speeches, to have their say?

Because the barbarians are to arrive today;
and they get bored with eloquence and orations.

Why all of a sudden this unrest
and confusion. (How solemn the faces have become).
Why are the streets and squares clearing quickly,
and all return to their homes, so deep in thought?

Because night is here but the barbarians have not come.
And some people arrived from the borders,
and said that there are no longer any barbarians.

And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?
Those people were some kind of solution.

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About Me

I'm now 62. I have a background in sociology, history and literature. I'm a voracious reader and intermittent diarist who discovered blogging a few years ago. I am a moderate-to-liberal Democrat and am very concerned about the divide and increasing tribalism in American society. I've been married to my dear husband for 31 years as of Dec. 21st, 2016.

Why is the Republican Party marketing mediocrity and immorality as their New Great Thing? - Sarah Jones, PoliticusUsa

“In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other." -- Mark Twain

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

“To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men” -- Abraham Lincoln